He said he got the news in a room "the size of a broom closet." In a hospital hallway, he had caught up with the urologist who tested him, and he asked for the results. The doctor took him into the closest room, told him the news was bad and said he was too busy to explain the test numbers. "Google it," he advised.Beckley, a former fighter pilot, sat on the floor and cried.

Having experienced a decade of frustration with the VA, he demanded to see the administrator. "This hospital — you guys — killed me," he said.

Instead, he said, a team of federal police officers led him out of Denver's VA hospital.

Robb LeChevalier talks about his battle with the VA at his home June 2, 2014 in Golden. The Hughes family has been battling the VA medical system for months to get care for LeChevalier, who is recovering from brain surgery for brain cancer. (John Leyba)

The scandal rocking the VA centers on delayed care and falsified appointment records, but critics say the problems run deeper — to quality of care and patient safety at many of the department's 1,700 health care facilities.

Congress and others are demanding disclosure on deaths related to delayed or inadequate care. Yet documentation of fatal medical mistakes, including the 40 preventable deaths alleged in Phoenix, is slowly trickling out.

A VA fact sheet released in April identified at least 23 veteran deaths since 2010 linked to delays in just one category of care — gastrointestinal examinations to detect colon cancers — including a death at the VA medical center in Grand Junction.

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VA critics say the scandal and tragedy are heightened by the fact that a simple solution to the backlog always has been available— paying for veterans in need of urgent or specialized care to receive it outside the VA system.

Without the VA's "culture of incompetence and corruption," said U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Aurora, veterans might have been more readily granted approval to seek care outside the VA.

"The law existed to let them do that. But they didn't do that," Coffman said. "They wanted to maintain this narrative they were an efficient system."

That narrative has crumbled. Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki gave his resignation to President Barack Obama on May 30.

On Thursday, Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., introduced a compromise bill that
would allow veterans to see private doctors outside the VA system if they have to wait a long time for appointments or live more than 40 miles from a VA facility.

The McCain/Sanders bill also calls for construction of 26 new VA medical centers in 18 states and $500 million to hire more VA doctors and nurses.

Monica Hughes shows an MRI scan on her husband's brain as they talk about their battle with the VA at their home June 2, 2014 in Golden. The Hughes family has been battling the VA medical system for months to get care for Robb LeChevalier, a veteran recovering from brain surgery for brain cancer.

Coffman, who has been a vocal critic of delays and cost overruns at the VA's new hospital under construction in Aurora, said legislation should include his bill to strip the department's authority to build its own hospitals.

Beckley had waited a year after applying for VA medical benefits to get approved for coverage. Then, he said, despite regular exams, his prostate cancer was missed for years because the nurse practitioner who saw him refused to do the thorough physical examination requested and relied only on blood tests. Beckley said he had forewarned him that every man on his father's side of the family had died of prostate cancer by his early 60s.

When the nurse practitioner finally did an exam and detected an unusual firmness, he offered Beckley an appointment with a urologist — in three months. Beckley said he fought and won an appointment to be tested immediately. But then he had to track down the urologist for the test results. He Googled the numbers the urologist hastily provided and learned he had an advanced, aggressive cancer.

The VA never acknowledged a mistake, he said, but did call the University of Colorado Cancer Center at the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, which provided immediate, lifesaving treatment.

A VA investigation into Beckley's complaint showed it was dismissed after the nurse practitioner — who Beckley thought was a doctor — disputed his statements. For example, the nurse mentioned one occasion when he declined to perform a rectal examination because he preferred doing a blood test first. Beckley says the nurse refused at least 10 times.

After reviewing the investigation records, VA spokesman Daniel Warvi said he believes "the professional skill and knowledge (of the nurse practitioner) was instrumental in catching this veteran's cancer early."

As to the way Beckley was informed and dealt with at the hospital, "we're going to look into how we can improve that," Warvi said.

Now 67, Beckley said his most recent blood tests were "encouraging," and he has a VA physician for follow-up care whom he likes and admires.

"They say I'm in remission," he said. "Right now, I feel good. I might be that one guy that beats it."

At Bergmann and Moore, a law firm that represents about 800 veterans seeking satisfactory benefit rulings, lawyer Joe Moore said the VA has always been able to send veterans in urgent need of medical care to a private health care provider.

"They certainly can," he said. "There is nothing the (VA) hates more than paying for private medical care."

Instead, he said, the VA has created "a culture of fudging the numbers," he said. "The central office knows goals can't be met with the resources given, yet somehow miracles have happened and they're meeting their numbers."

The unreported scandal at the VA, Moore said, is an appeals system that leaves thousands of veterans dying before they ever get approval to wait for medical care at a hospital.

Veterans can get a quick initial decision, he said, but if they appeal, they typically wait four to 10 years for benefits.

While the numbers of veterans have declined nationally as World War II, Korean War and Vietnam War soldiers die, younger veterans are returning from war with more complicated medical problems — amputations, traumatic brain injuries, mental health problems after multiple deployments. Many claims now list more than 10 disabilities.

While the waits for treatment are deplorable, Moore said, "a lot of veterans can't even get in that line."

Former chief Shinseki resigned a little more than a month after officials at a VA medical center in Phoenix were accused of keeping "secret" records to conceal how long patients were really waiting for appointments. At the same time, they were earning commendations and bonuses for meeting goals for short wait times.

In the Golden home of Robert LeChevalier, a pile of 59 VA claim-rejection letters, when spread out, tile the floor of his dining room.

LeChevalier says his case seems to be a typical example of the VA not giving appropriate attention to urgent cases.

The 59-year-old electrical engineer, an Air Force veteran, had always had private insurance until he was laid off from work near the middle of 2013. He quickly applied for VA medical benefits in July.

In November, before he had been seen by a VA primary care physician for an initial exam, he experienced two severe seizures, which sent him by ambulance to the nearest emergency room, at Boulder Community Hospital.

LeChevalier was told the emergency visits wouldn't be covered because he hadn't been screened first at a VA facility. His wife, Monica Hughes, attempted to make an appointment with a primary care provider, but the earliest available was in January in Denver.

But he required emergency care several times in December and on Jan. 2. An emergency brain biopsy was performed Jan. 3 at the Boulder hospital, where he was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a deadly form of brain cancer that kills patients within three months.

The Boulder hospital scheduled surgery Jan. 16 to remove the tumor. The VA would not approve the surgery for that date, seeking to delay it for several weeks so it could confirm biopsy results, LeChevalier said. But it would have meant surgery almost three months after his symptoms began — uncomfortably close to the end of the three-month window that doctors gave him.

"I could feel the footsteps on my grave," LeChevalier said.

Monica Hughes would not accept the VA's "no" for an answer, and a panel of doctors relented to her nonstop petitions and approved her husband's surgery outside the VA the day before it was scheduled.

"I wasn't ready to lose my husband," she said.

Post-surgery, LeChevalier tried unconventional therapies pioneered in the U.S. but offered only in Mexico, rather than enduring the severe side effects of chemotherapy and irradiating his brain.

Remarkably, his brain scans are clear so far, he said. He was, however, left with a $100,000 bill for the Boulder biopsy, $250,000 in bills for ER visits and a tall stack of claim rejections that always close politely with the phrase "Thank you for your service." The VA did pay for his surgery.

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